


Model Student

by aiwritingfic



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Character Study, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Humorous Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 14:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1822132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aiwritingfic/pseuds/aiwritingfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Midorima teaches Kise to study so Kise will stop hounding Midorima for his lucky pencil.  If only things worked out the way Midorima expected them to...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Model Student

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Qem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qem/gifts).



> Dear Qem, you are a doll, a darling, a sweetheart, and I'm afraid I'm not good enough a writer to give you the awesome fantastic fic that you richly deserve. I hope this will do for now! With much gratitude and love to mmmdraco for the super secret beta (for however much good it did me, since I was glaringly obvious... XD)

“Midorimacchi, please,” Kise wailed. “I’ll get you some rare lucky items in exchange!”

Midorima shut his pencil case with a snap and held it closed. “No. You need to study. The lucky pencil isn’t meant to be used as a way to avoid studying. It merely bolsters effort.”

Kise waved his arms dramatically, looking injured. “I make plenty of effort, Midorimacchi! I attend classes and don’t skip, I do my homework, and all this on top of basketball and modeling!”

Midorima pinned Kise with a look that made Kise move backwards half a step. “Do you review your class notes after you get home for the night?”

Kise grinned sheepishly. “... No.”

“Do you do the extra optional assignments?”

“... No.”

“Do you think about what you gained from every lesson, or what the main points of each chapter was?”

Kise shook his head, staring at Midorima again in open-eyed wonder.

“Do you even look at the study guides ahead of time?” Midorima asked. Kise was already nodding, but Midorima added, “Earlier than the night before the test.” Kise’s head paused mid-nod, and then reluctantly turned into a shake as Midorima had expected. “Hmph.” Midorima pushed his glasses up, re-seating them properly on his nose. “Clearly you only do the bare minimum required. I wouldn't call that 'plenty of effort' at all. If you don’t help yourself, don’t expect the pencil to help you.”

"But, Midorimacchi,” Kise said, “That's kind of unreasonable! No one has the time to do all that, right? We have basketball practice all the time, and then on top of that I have modeling too!”

“I do everything I've said and more,” Midorima informed Kise primly. 

Kise opened his mouth, about to protest something, and then thought better of it. “Are you sure I can’t borrow that pencil?”

“You may not,” Midorima said, frowning. As Kise turned away, crestfallen, Midorima said, “However, you may copy my studying habits.”

Kise turned back to Midorima, eyes wide. “Copy them?” he asked. Then Kise brightened, grabbed Midorima, and hugged him before Midorima could dodge. “Midorimacchi, you’re a genius!”

Midorima pushed with all his might, finally disentangling himself from the overexcited overgrown puppy. He hoped he wouldn't regret this. At the same time, perhaps Kise would learn good study habits at last, thus improving his grades and putting an end to the constant whining for Midorima's lucky pencil every examination period. Midorima cleared his throat. "If you have time after school and practice, you can come home with me and copy the way I study."

"Got it, I'll see you after school," Kise said, cheerful now. "Thank you, Midorimacchi!" He waved at Midorima and then bounced away towards his classroom.

* * *

When they got to Midorima's house, it took some time for them to get upstairs and into Midorima's bedroom because Midorima's mother and sister kept asking Kise about himself, and it would have been impolite of Midorima to leave Kise downstairs and have Kise join him in his bedroom after Midorima's family was through interrogating him. After ten minutes, though, Midorima interrupted them as politely as he could manage while repressing his impatience. "We'll be studying in my room," he announced. 

"Oh, of course, do go on up, dear, both of you," his mother had said immediately. "I'll bring something up in a few minutes."

"I will," Midorima's sister said quickly. Midorima gaped at her momentarily--she never volunteered for chores. Not for the first time, Midorima marvelled at the powers that be. To compensate for Kise's lack of intellectual ability, not only had the powers that be gifted Kise with athleticism and good looks, they had also poured a too-generous heaping of whatever it was that made females of every sort bend over backwards to help him. Midorima would envy Kise, but he'd seen Kise's grades. There was a lot to make up for. Too bad for Kise that not all of Kise's teachers were female. 

"Come," Midorima said before Kise could babble more social niceties and delay them further. "My bedroom is the second door on the right upstairs."

"Oh, yes, thank you," Kise said, bowing quickly to Midorima's mother and sister before trailing obediently after Midorima. 

Midorima's room was as he'd left it that morning. He put his schoolbag down next to his desk and then paused. There was only space for one at the desk, so if Kise was going to copy Midorima, he would need a place to work too. "What's your studying environment like at home?" Midorima asked.

Kise looked up from where he was standing next to Midorima's dresser looking at pictures of Midorima's family. "Oh, um, like this," he said after a quick glance around Midorima's room. "Maybe not quite as neat, though."

It was impossoble for Midorima to repress a snort at the obviousness of that--the only person who might have a neater room than Midorima's was Akashi. Midorima said, "There isn't room at the desk for both of us, and I want you to be able to observe. Can you study at a kotatsu?"

"I don't see why not," Kise said.

"Fine." Midorima pointed to the center of the room. "Stay here and I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere, and _don't touch anything_." He glared at Kise until Kise wilted visibly before nodding and leaving the room to hunt down the spare kotatsu he knew his mother had kept somewhere.

* * *

Some time later, Midorima and Kise were finally settled down opposite each other across the kotatsu in the middle of Midorima's room. Kise gaped at the array of highlighters Midorima placed on the kotatsu. "Why so many?" he asked.

"Red is for important things that serve as the touchstones of every chapter," Midorima said, picking up the red highlighter for emphasis. "Take this chapter for example. Chemistry equations must balance. That's the key to everything you do in this chapter. Therefore, you highlight it in red."

Kise did so obediently on his own notes.

"Blue and green are for points of emphasis," Midorima said. "Use blue to highlight procedures or step-by-step instructions. Green is good for definitions. Yellow is merely for word-highlighting. Now, we both had chemistry today, and I know both our classes are covering the same material now, so it's the perfect material for you to start your copying. Do what I do. Page two hundred and seventeen..."

* * *

When they were done with chemistry, Kise's notebook closely resembled Midorima's. Midorima nodded after he'd inspected Kise's notebook. "Good," he said. "Just keep going on like that every night for all the classes you take every day. Now it's time to review for the upcoming exam."

Kise slumped on the table, face hidden in the crook of his arms. "Can we take a break, Midorimacchi? My head hurts."

They'd only been studying for half an hour, but Midorima supposed it was all right. His sister had dropped off a tray some time ago, but although Kise had suggested a break, Midorima had vetoed it, so neither of them had stopped to look at whatever was on the tray. (Not exactly true--Kise had looked at it in longing often, Midorima had noticed, but at least Kise had then re-focused on studying again.) 

Midorima turned to it now as Kise made a soft sound of pain that Midorima ignored as being a clear play for attention. The pot wrapped in the teapot warmer turned out to be plum tea. Midorima poured two cups out and then put one in front of Kise. "Don't knock it over," he said.

Carefully, Kise looked up, then unfolded himself and sniffed the cup. "Oh, this is nice," he said, sipping. "And it's still warm!" Kise glanced at the teapot. "A teapot warmer! Midorimacchi, your mother is so considerate! We don't even have one of those at home!" 

Midorima was amazed Kise knew what it was, if he hadn't seen it at home. The look on his face must have made that thought obvious, because Kise laughed. "One of the photographers I work with--he only drinks green tea, and his staff always make sure this is over the teapot," he said. "I asked them what it was for."

"I see," Midorima said. "How long does it take?"

"Shoots?" Kise waited for Midorima's affirmative nod, then thought. "The last one was last Sunday, and it wasn't a big shoot, so we started at seven and ended at three. Sometimes they go all day, but this one was pretty short."

A seven-hour shoot was short? Midorima frowned. "What do you do at shoots?"

"Are you interested?" Kise peered at Midorima. "Actually, come to think of it, Midorimacchi, you could probably do young salaryman really well! I can let my agent know if you are, and all we have to do is get you some head shots--"

"I am _not_ interested," Midorima said, flushing at the thought. "What a waste of time." 

Kise looked hurt.

"I merely meant that it would be a waste of everyone's time for _me_ to model," Midorima said stiffly. "I don't have the talent or the inclination."

Kise relaxed a little. "Too bad," he said. "Models have to be tall, and you're really tall, Midorimacchi. You'd do great on the catwalk. But then you'd have to walk like this, and I don't know if you'd be able to relax enough for that." Kise grinned, getting up and then backing into a corner of the room, but then he paused. "On second thoughts, we'd have to do this in the hallway," Kise said.

"There's no need," Midorima said, but Kise was already opening his door and looking down the hallway. 

"Perfect," Kise said with a grin. "Watch me, Midorimacchi, I copied this from TV!"

Resigned, Midorima stayed in the doorway of his room to watch out of the way. Kise's butt swayed, and his gait was strangely both fluid and regimented. He strutted to the end of the hallway, and then did a turn. Midorima couldn't help but envision Kise on a catwalk--it wasn't like he watched this sort of thing, but he'd been exposed to enough popular culture to remember the occasional fashion show clip during news programs or commercials. He wanted to turn away, but his eyes were drawn anyway. Kise really was a natural at this.

"How was it, Midorimacchi?" Kise said, grinning. "Think you can do that?"

The thought of strutting was enough to turn the tips of Midorima's ears bright red. "No thank you," he said frostily, turning back into his room. "It's time for English."

Kise brightened. "My best subject," he said.

Midorima frowned--English was a subject Midorima had to work at. "It's amazing how this is your best subject," he said. "Irregular verbs, irregular plurals, inconsistent patterns..."

"Now now, don't look at it like a system," Kise said, making a face. "English isn't chemistry. It's really quite... natural?"

"Natural?" Midorima frowned at Kise. "Explain."

"Don't you watch any TV? American TV, British TV, anything where they speak English?"

"I listen to NHK Radio," Midorima said.

Kise looked at a loss for a moment, and then he said, "The English on TV dramas is really different, Midorimacchi." 

Midorima blinked at Kise. "You can tell?"

"Well, I can't explain it, but somehow, it sounds different, you know? Even though it's scripted, it doesn't sound or feel scripted, unlike NHK Radio." Kise's face lit up. "With TV dramas--the good ones, with the great actors--you can tell everything they mean to say without actually listening to the words, so even if you can't quite tell what words they're saying, you can guess because their facial expressions tell you, and you can hear the differences in the way they talk and how different phrases and words mean different things, and it's not really something you can really get from the radio..."

"... I see." Midorima had heard of intuitive learners before, and Kise certainly fit the bill. Kise picked basketball moves and other actions up instantly; it wasn't beyond the realm of impossibility that Kise would notice and remember meanings through watching, of all things, television. "So your best section of the exam is listening comprehension."

Kise nodded and grinned. "Reading comprehension too."

"Grammar?"

"Um." Kise scratched his head. "It's kind of mixed. Some questions I'm really good at--you know, the ones where they give you half a sentence and you pick the next half? But I can't answer questions like 'what tense is this' or 'give an example of a type of verb' or anything like that."

Grammar was Midorima's best section, of course. Learning through logical deduction and systematic understanding seemed beyond Kise, but clearly _some_ things penetrated that thick blond skull. The mystery of why Kise was so bad at all his other subjects but somehow managed to scrape by in English was now solved. "Then let's work on grammar."

Kise sighed but complied, pulling out the requisite notebooks.

* * *

"Midorimacchi~!"

Midorima wasn't the only one who winced as Kise's yell echoed through the hallways, serving as an unmistakeable vanguard for Kise himself. Midorima stopped, sighed, pushed his glasses higher on his nose, and waited for Kise to catch up. 

He regretted the decision immediately when Kise wrapped his arms around Midorima in a happy bear hug. "Let go--what are you doing, Kise? LET GO~!"

"Midorimacchi, we did it, we did it, I'm in the top half!"

"That's fine, now LET GO!" Midorima pushed as hard as he could, and finally broke free. He ignored Kise's wounded look and took his glasses off to polish them. "Congratulations on your achievement."

"I couldn't have done it without you," Kise said. "After school, let's go somewhere! What do you want? It's totally my treat! I have to thank you! No one else would take any notice of me or help me, and I'm so glad you did! Oh, and here, I got this, Oha Asa said you might want it!"

Midorima accepted the oversized poster of Kerosuke solemnly. "Thank you," he said. 

"No, thank _you_!" Kise was clearly still overexcited from seeing his class standings. "I'll get you more of those when I see them!" 

Midorima watched Kise bouncing happily down the hall and sighed. The powers that be really did have a soft spot for charismatic idiots.

* * *

Unfortunately for Kise, the studying techniques he copied from Midorima only worked for the specific chapters he'd studied with Midorima. Unfortunately for Midorima, Kise made the connection.

"Midorimacchi~! Don't run away, please~! We have to study~!"


End file.
